This is my offering for this 100 year anniversary of the horrible war of WWI. All wars are terrible, but WWI was the worst the world had yet ever seen in terms of deaths (16 million) and suffering of ordinary people over a major part of the globe.
1) What did they die for? (Part 3 only) by John Molyneux from Rebel, an Irish socialist website.
This article adequately explains why the new capitalist ruling classes were so willing to sacrifice the lives of ordinary working people for their petty ambitions of power and profits. By this time more sophisticated weapons were developed like airplanes, tanks, large warships, machine guns, and poison gas. It was a slaughterhouse that took the lives of an estimated 16 million ordinary people to satisfy the appetites of capitalist ruling classes that had emerged from the 19th century.
But our capitalist masters would not be satisfied with the results of this "war to end all wars". Soon after the conclusion of this war, WWII started, and it caused around 80 millions deaths among ordinary people while it enriched many of the already rich capitalist classes.
2) The armistice of November 11, 1918 and the lessons for today by Nick Beams from World Socialist Web Site.
Beams writes about this war, but in the context of all these capitalist wars fought by workers to carve up the world among capitalist ruling classes for their benefit. After two major global wars he brings us up-to-date to the current scene in which the capitalist US Empire appear to be planning a final war that threatens the very existence of humans.
They were only temporarily subsumed under the domination of the United States. The disease which had gripped the global capitalist system was not cured, it only went into a period of remission. This period has now ended.Now our arrogant masters seem to be planning another global nuclear war holocaust that would likely cause the extinction of all humans. Experts like Stephen Cohen fear this is about to happen--unless of course we can prevent it by taking away their ownership and control of most of the world's economy.
The very development of global capitalism after 1945 has brought about the relative and absolute decline of the United States. Confronted with the resurgence of its old rivals in Europe and Asia and the emergence of a potential new challenger in the form of China it now prepares to wage world war. And all the other imperialist powers are on the same road. They were only temporarily subsumed under the domination of the United States. The disease which had gripped the global capitalist system was not cured, it only went into a period of remission. This period has now ended.
The very development of global capitalism after 1945 has brought about the relative and absolute decline of the United States. Confronted with the resurgence of its old rivals in Europe and Asia and the emergence of a potential new challenger in the form of China it now prepares to wage world war.
